Sunday, April 18, 2010

despite recent reports by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, the Little Hoover Commission and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice calling for the system's closure and the reallocation of its $322.7 million budget to other spending priorities, the state Legislature has taken no action.

Maintaining the five facilities is a waste of precious resources. Because the system is the subject of a lawsuit brought by the nonprofit Prison Law Office over the horrific conditions within the state's youth correctional facilities and the consent decree that resulted from it, the state spends an average of $228,715 a year for each of the 1,400 youths in its custody. ...

Retaining the state-run youth corrections system is no longer necessary because the requisite institutional facilities now exist at the county level. Over the last 12 years the state and federal governments invested millions of dollars to expand and modernize county juvenile justice facilities across the state. According to the reports from the Legislative Analyst's Office and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, California counties now have 2,000 to 3,000 surplus high- and medium-security institutional beds that could more than absorb the majority of the youths remaining in state facilities at less than half the cost.

Regular readers will recall this proposal sounds amazingly similar to Texas state Sen. John Whitmire's call to "abolish" the Texas Youth Commission and downstream their placement in secure lockups to counties, who would get grants for the youth so diverted. Texas started down that road and has closed several facilities, shuttering two more on August 1. The Senate Criminal Justice Committee will hear testimony on Texas' diversion grants to counties at an upcoming meeting on April 29. TYC's costs per youth are about $99,000 per year according to the Legislativ Budget Board, about not as high as California's, but substantially more than the $17-18K spent on inmates at TDCJ.

Another item from California recently caught my eye. Candidates in California elections are calling for cutting state jobs to reduce the budget. But it turns out the largest groups of employees are prison guards and university staff. Says CalCoastNews.com: "Bottom line: Any candidate who claims to have a plan on cutting state jobs will have to address the impact on education and Corrections."

TYC should provide about 750 to 1000 beds for the worst of the worse. Counties can deal with the rest but the lege must severely limit, by statute, the offenses for which a kid can be committed. Won't go over well with JPD's, DA's, judges but it can and should be done. Narrowing those offenses will be hell to get done because of the mindset of many practioners in juvenile justice system.

The danger, my friends, is the risk that many more kids will be certified as adults and sent to the adult system where rehabilitation takes the form of cell therapy. At least Texas makes an effort to rehabilitate kids in the juvenile system. You can't say that in California thus the problems they are having. If the counties have the facilities, so be it. Problem is they don't, and there is no money to build them from what I can tell. The cheapest thing to do is certify them all as adults. It's also the worst thing you could do.

It is not the cheapest thing to do. It is actually the most expensive, in the long run. Certify a youth and you are looking at least a million dollars in costs for future court dates, future incarceration, and community/victim impact.

We expect other people to correct the bad actors, but we didn't expect their parents to do that. When those habits are allowed to toxify unchecked until they are 14-18 years old its hard for government workers to reverse that trend. Big government advocate don't seem to understand this.

Anon 4:55 Is right instead of doing the right things persecutors I, mean prosecutors . Will simply get their Politician buddies elected judges to certify more children as adults .

Funny we are willing to to let minors have all the negative parts of being adults but are not willing to allow the rewarding parts I.E . being able to purchase alcohol vote have sex ,smoking if you call that a positive things , drive in some cases . We say legally they cannot make their ow decisions . Yet we are willing o to treat them like adults when we wan to “punish” or make some other unpleasant action.

If any one thinks teens are not aware of this hypocrisy they are either willfully ignorant or have abnormally sadistic desire to punish .Until it Is their children that is . Then they will inevitability have every imaginable excuse or blame their child's victim.

On That note those under about 25 roughly have not completely developed neurologically and are unquestionably not the same people . Very few of us are .

Grits said:"TYC's costs per youth are about $99,000 per year according to the Legislativ Budget Board, about not as high as California's, but substantially more than the $17-18K spent on inmates at TDCJ."

Remember, that a big part of this is to pay for mandatory public education. Not to mention, that this is where many special education students end up.

I have said this many times, when a juvi commits a crime and the local probation office fails and has to commit them to state lock up the offending juvi should go to an environment that is more self sufficient and equipped to efficiently handle the local counties failure to rehabilitate the youth. The tyc should be rolled up to tdc and a special centrally located plantation/farm be carved out just for that population. Since tyc is nothing more than a preparatory program for tdc, this reality would be more in the open.

99k to house a kid in tyc, these team playas got it going on. Watching the news a white Fort Worth high school honor student eagle scout came home for lunch and was fatally shot in the head by 2 black juvenile burglars who were suppressed by him. The honor student had a great future and would most likely earn that kind of yearly salary, pay taxes on it, and possibly though his work employ others, while these 2 juveniles will be costing us 2 twice that to keep locked up. A clash of cultures some might say, a deeper look may revile a generation of success and living off the government, respectively. These kids will most likely go to tdc and the cost to house them will be 17k a year since they are 16, but one is a first offender and dad is on tv asking what went wrong. It may be societies fault in its glorification of negative stereo types in one culture over another are simply bad parenting. Who knows and even more so who cares, more fodder for the system. It just another black kid flushing his life down the toilet, if his people don’t care why should we.{sarcasm}

As a tyc alumni the more I think about this crazy juvi justice system the more I’m inclined to believe that its worst now than in the 60’s and 70’s. Perhaps that goes back to the dramatic shift in societys racism moving from Jim Crow to Affirmative Action that has raised the cost and lowered the ROI on Texas Juvenile Criminal Justice. These juvenile criminals need a “GATESVILLE” but minus the torture. Based on historical evidence this can’t be done with the layers of corruption ingrained in tyc over the last 3 decades and its either a fool or a thief who would disagree. The best option is a prison plantation/farm coupled with known good programs. I believe that by taking away the kids desire to be institutionalized while giving them the tools needed to succeed will provide the tax payers the best ROI against poor parenting.

However I’m not naive and realize this concept goes against the political thinking of growing a prison business that enslaves its citizens either by employee number or case number. Yet a society that would rather spend more on enslaving its populous as opposed to educating in life skills to be a productive citizens is nothing short of ignorance in the cultural color blind divide of the haves and have not’s. Since this is unlikely perhaps a healthy balance between punishment and rehabilitation would be nice and as long as we can afford the selfish agendas of the management this type of industry attracts then I suppose we can live with the corruption the managers bread.

As usual Sheldon, make sure the individual isn't accountable for their behavior. It is the failure of the system. Never be accountable for lying, stealing, drugs. Probation and TYC's fault that children do not take responsibility! Good grief.

007 are you retarded or can you just not comprehend what you read. Sheldon is saying we don’t teach accountability to the kids after local diversionary programs fail. We are paid by the tax payers to teach these kids accountability. We are a failure at teaching accountability but successful at getting them ready to enter the adult system. The next poster reminds us that Brookins is our poster child for accountability. The problem with Sheldon is he is highly educated, seems well read, and has an inside knowledge of the system. Much smarter than anyone who would want to work in this idiocracy. I have seen him interact with our kids and for as long as I have worked at the agency I have never seen anyone who could get through to these kids like he can. We need him on our team, yet I think management would be afraid of his integrity. He is not afraid to tell it like it is and it must be embarrassing to some that we didn’t crumble his sprit into submission while we had him. Keep up the fight Sheldon I like your idea of making these kids earn their keep while providing the skills to be successful in the free.

The reason that it is so expensive to run a state run juvenile facility in California is because of the Ferrel vs. Cate lawsuit. This judgment re-arraigned the cost of each ward to a correctional & rehabilitation facility. The lawsuit made the facilities staff more counselors, case workers, case managers, and psychiatrists. Very interesting what a Senator can do to make things cost more.

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